Nearly a decade after kicking off development, Apple has quietly pulled the plug on its long-rumored foray into electric and self-driving vehicles. Codenamed Project Titan and cloaked in signature Apple secrecy, the ambitious initiative once aimed to upend Detroit and Tesla with an Apple-designed car laden with next-generation technology by the middle of this decade.

But after years of reported struggles with staff turnover, shifting priorities, and internal doubts over its feasibility, Titan seems to have veered into a ditch instead.

Multiple outlets reported this week that Apple’s chief operating officer Jeff Williams and technology chief Kevin Lynch informed Titan’s roughly 2,000 employees on Tuesday that the project would wind down. While some engineering resources will shift over to Apple’s burgeoning artificial intelligence efforts, layoffs are also expected, according to Bloomberg.

For Apple watchers, the move closes the door on rampant speculation that had fueled everything from potential partnerships with the likes of Hyundai to whispers that the secret project could somehow still meet its goal of launching an Apple Car by 2025.

False starts and unfulfilled promise

Talk of an Apple Car first revved up around 2015, when the tech giant reportedly poached talent from Tesla and began scoping out secure test track locations. The project shifted gears through multiple reboots in the ensuing years, while Apple registered various self-driving car companies and tested vehicles across the state of California.

Sources described chaotic development with constantly shifting targets, as Apple struggled to reconcile Steve Jobs-level ambition with the hard realities of breaking into Detroit. Reported benchmarks included launching an affordable electric car for mainstream buyers with full self-driving mode by 2025.

But by last year, both goals were apparently slipping out of reach. Leaked Apple documents questioned whether Project Titan could deliver full autonomy without humans as backup drivers. And the potential price tag was edging north of $100,000 — putting it out of reach for most consumers.

This year was expected to be a make-or-break period, with field testing of Apple’s autonomous platform slated to expand significantly. But while Project Titan vehicles continued racking up test mileage in California this January, it appears the writing was already on the wall.

Pivot to AI amid layoffs

Now Project Titan itself becomes another relic of unrealized Apple ambition like the Apple television or wireless charging AirPower pads. Apple has communicated to employees this week that it will shift related engineering talent to other projects developing cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities in areas like computer vision.

At the same time, Bloomberg reported unspecified layoffs surrounding the program’s wind down. It caps a rocky seven-year stretch for Project Titan that saw notable brain drain among key hires from Tesla and elsewhere, while development struggled to build momentum. Given the secretive culture at Apple, insiders say many engineers focused solely on their piece of Titan without wider visibility into the program’s overall progress.

While Apple is waving the checkered flag on its own vehicle ambitions, the high-tech electric and self-driving space remains crowded with competitors. Sony recently unveiled an electric vehicle project with Honda targeting deliveries in 2026. And crosstown rival Google remains bullish on autonomous driving technology, with Waymo recently opening its driverless taxi service to the public in Phoenix.

Meanwhile, Apple is aiming to accelerate its AI efforts as CEO Tim Cook touted upcoming new features leveraging machine learning across the company’s products and services later this year. It appears Project Titan may now live on feeding those ambitions instead of upending another industry.

For now, however, the road for Apple’s electric car ends here.